Effects of Memory Load on Joke and Lexical Decision Tasks

1995 ◽  
Vol 77 (1) ◽  
pp. 243-252 ◽  
Author(s):  
David S. Kreiner
Keyword(s):  
College Students ◽  
Working Memory ◽  
Lexical Decision ◽  
Language Comprehension ◽  
Memory Load ◽  
Decision Time ◽  
The Body ◽  
Lexical Decision Time ◽  
Lexical Decision Tasks ◽  
Decision Tasks

The effects of a five-digit memory load on joke and lexical decision tasks were measured. 72 college students read jokes ending with punchlines, consistent endings, or inconsistent endings and decided whether the endings produced jokes. Memory-loaded subjects were slower than nonloaded subjects, particularly on inconsistent endings which were surprising but not coherent with the body of the joke. Memory load had no effect on lexical decision time and did not interact with word frequency. The results supported the claim that working memory serves an integrating role in language comprehension.

Brain correlates of action word memory

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Zubaida Shebani ◽  
Francesca Carota ◽  
Olaf Hauk ◽  
James B. Rowe ◽  
Lawrence W. Barsalou ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Working Memory ◽  
Motor Cortex ◽  
Verbal Memory ◽  
Memory Load ◽  
Memory Performance ◽  
Verbal Working Memory ◽  
The Body ◽  
Action Perception ◽  
Brain Correlates ◽  
Posterior Parietal

AbstractWhen understanding language semantically related to actions, the motor cortex is active and may be sensitive to semantic information, for example about the body-part-relationship of displayed action-related words. Conversely, movements of the hands or feet can impair memory performance for arm- and leg-related action words respectively, suggesting that the role of motor systems extends to verbal working memory. Here, we studied brain correlates of verbal memory load for action-related words using event-related fMRI during the encoding and memory maintenance of word lists. Seventeen participants saw either four identical or four different words from the same category, semantically related to actions typically performed either with the arms or with the legs. After a variable delay of 4-14 seconds, they performed a nonmatching-to-sample task. Hemodynamic activity related to the information load of words at presentation was most prominent in left temporo-occipital and bilateral posterior-parietal areas. In contrast, larger demand on verbal memory maintenance produced greater activation in left premotor and supplementary motor cortex, along with posterior-parietal areas, indicating that verbal memory circuits for action-related words include the cortical action system. Somatotopic memory load effects of arm- and leg-related words were not present at the typical precentral loci where earlier studies had found such word-category differences in reading tasks, although traces of somatotopic semantic mappings were observed at more anterior cortical regions. These results support a neurocomputational model of distributed action-perception circuits (APCs), according to which language understanding is manifest as full ignition of APCs, whereas working memory is realized as reverberant activity gradually receding to multimodal prefrontal and lateral temporal areas.

The processing advantage and disadvantage for homophones in lexical decision tasks.

2013 ◽  
Vol 39 (2) ◽  
pp. 529-551 ◽  
Author(s):  
Yasushi Hino ◽  
Yuu Kusunose ◽  
Stephen J. Lupker ◽  
Debra Jared
Keyword(s):  
Lexical Decision ◽  
Lexical Decision Tasks ◽  
Decision Tasks

scholarly journals How do we segment text? Two-stage chunking operation in reading

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jinbiao Yang ◽  
Qing Cai ◽  
Xing Tian
Keyword(s):  
Lexical Decision ◽  
Simultaneous Detection ◽  
Decision Time ◽  
Behavioral Experiment ◽  
Two Stage ◽  
Lexical Status ◽  
Lexical Decision Time ◽  
Written Information ◽  
Key Press ◽  
Read Word

AbstractChunking in language comprehension is a process that segments continuous linguistic input into smaller chunks that are in reader’s mental lexicon. Effective chunking during reading facilitates disambiguation and enhances efficiency for comprehension. However, the mechanisms of chunking remain elusive, especially in reading given that information arrives simultaneously yet the written systems may not have explicit cues for labeling boundaries such as Chinese. What are the mechanisms of chunking operation that mediates the reading of the text that normally contains hierarchical information? We investigated this question by manipulating the lexical status of the chunks at distinct levels of grain-size in four-character Chinese strings, including the two-character local chunk and four-character global chunk. Participants were asked to make lexical decision on these strings in a behavioral experiment, followed by a passive reading task when their electroencephalography (EEG) were recorded. The behavioral results showed that the lexical decision time of lexicalized two-character local chunks was influenced by the lexical status of four-character global chunk, but not vice versa, which indicated that the processing of global chunks possessed priority over the local chunks. The EEG results revealed that familiar lexical chunks were detected simultaneously at both levels and further processed in a different temporal order -- the onset of lexical access for the global chunks was earlier than that of local chunks. These consistent behavioral and EEG results suggest that chunking in reading occurs at multiple levels via a two-stage operation -- simultaneous detection and global-first recognition.Significance StatementThe learners of a new language often read word by word. But why can proficient readers read multiple words at a time? The current study investigates how we efficiently segment a complicate text into smaller pieces and how we process these pieces. Participants read Chinese strings with different structures while their key-press responses and brain EEG signals were recorded. We found that texts were quickly (about 100 ms from their occurrences) segmented to varied sizes of pieces, and larger pieces were then processed earlier than small pieces. Our results suggest that readers can use existing knowledge to efficiently segment and process written information.

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